FSM Premedia GmbH & Co. KG

FSM Premedia GmbH & Co KG offers its commercial customers a variety of services, such as graphic design, media design, digital printing and label production.

The company was founded in the mid-1970s as Fotosatz Münsterland and today employs 15 people. "We started getting involved with digital label printing more than 10 years ago," explains Jürgen Schmitte, Managing Director of FSM Premedia. “Many requests from our customers are for print runs of 300 labels or more, so what counts for us is the flexibility of a solution, not the speed.” 

A label press was needed that delivered very good print quality at attractive, entry-level prices in order to be able to realize the lowest possible unit costs for labels. 

Based on these demands, the company decided to integrate an Epson SurePress L-4033AW into label production as early as 2016. Because productivity requirements continued to increase over time, this machine was replaced by an Epson SurePress L-4533AW in January 2021. With this press, FSM Premedia handles orders from 300 pieces up to 30,000 labels and more. The new machine is characterized by improved ease of use and reduced maintenance. "We can also see a significant improvement in the sharpness of the edges, which is particularly noticeable with fine fonts," explains Schmitte.

“We print on UPM Raflex Plus Adhesive Film for many of our orders because the majority of these prints are used for plastic tubes or bottles that are crushed, for example. The label must not wrinkle in the process and must also stick to the substrate." The prints are varnished as a post-treatment to provide additional protection. In addition, information such as batch number, filling date or customer-specific items are also printed. 

A regularly recurring order involves the production of wine labels, which requires a special performance profile. "With these labels, we use rough natural paper, which is very demanding when printing. FSM Premedia uses SurePress matte black for these labels and thus achieves extremely impressive print quality with deep black. "Few other machines on the market can do that," says Schmitte happily.

In addition to the colours black, matte black, cyan, magenta, yellow, green and orange, the AQ ink set used in the Epson SurePress also contains white ink in the version used at FSM Premedia, which is printed opaquely on many materials, such as transparent film or metallic substrates. Users select whether white is printed first for underprinting or last.

Overall, the Epson​ SurePress is a clear plus for FSM Premedia, both because of its large colour space and high colour consistency. Schmitte continues: "It is particularly important for our customers with recurring orders that the different print batches do not differ in the colour appearance. With the Epson SurePress, we can achieve this with little effort and even after a head replacement or maintenance work, we seamlessly continue to print our labels, which is a clear advantage.”

Before the decision to use the Epson SurePress, the company carried out extensive tests. Thus, the label contents were printed on original materials on a test basis and submitted to the customer for approval. Including further processing, the entire production chain was thoroughly tested before the purchase decision.

FSM Premedia already had good experiences with Epson products before using its first SurePress. In addition to the SurePress L-4533AW, two SureColor SC-P7000 large format printers and a WorkForce DS50000 scanner (note: included with the SurePress) are used in the company. “We have long been relying on Epson devices for our services, and we build on their reliability and performance,” explains Schmitte. “It was therefore only a small step for us to manage these label production orders with machines from this manufacturer. I am glad to have found a reliable Epson product again in the new SurePress L-4533AW."

Epson L-4533AW product information

Precise colours and very large colour space
White ink: White is optionally printed first as a base or last.
High quality: Variable-sized droplet technology for improved print quality
Epson AQ ink set with Black, Matte Black, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Green, Orange and White (for SurePress AW)
Simple set-up: Prints on all common standard materials (no pretreatment or primer required)
Simple maintenance and automated printing: Automatic inspection and cleaning of the printer heads

Your contact person for the Epson SurePress machines:
Harald Weber
E-mail: Harald.Weber@epson.de